So You Think You Can Burd

First off, apologies for the radio silence. This last month has been very busy, both work-wise and otherwise. For those of you who are not friends with me on Facebook, I have been posting some photos, which you can see here. Now, onto an overdue post:

Growing up I was never much into birds. Mammals were more my thing, being generally furry, soft, and cute instead of feathered and bedecked with pointy talons and beaks. However, in the last few years my interest in birds has been piqued. It started with the monkey bird feeder I hung on the porch of the condo. It took a couple days for the birds to find it, but once a lone chickadee discovered the smorgasbord it was only a matter of time before the porch was filled with birds: a pair of obese mourning doves that liked to sit in the monkey’s pan, sending showers of seeds to the hopping hordes of round dark-eyed juncos. There were chickadees, titmice, cardinals, blue jays and, every once in a while, an opportunistic red-tailed hawk. I grew fond of my birds and the entertainment they provided outside the sliding glass door.

During my last field season, a few bird species caught my eye. I didn’t have a bird book (cardinal sin for a field biologist, probably), so I could only name those few that I already knew or was able to pick up from people passing through the research center. I admired lilac-breasted rollers, grey crowned cranes, saddle-billed storks, Jackson’s and long-tailed widowbirds, and of course the ubiquitous superb starling. I took photos of them when the opportunity arose, but still didn’t give birds much thought.

Early this March, while the Princeton undergrad field course was here and I was just getting rolling on my research, a large tree next to the research center building was fruiting. Vicky - the de facto teaching assistant for the undergrad course - killed time each day by writing down all the bird species she saw, seeing how many she could get in the few days she was at Ol Pej. This appealed to me on many levels. First, birds are animals and I do adore watching animals. Second, I got to make a list of species. I take perhaps a bit more pleasure than is normal in making lists, so this was very appealing. Third, here was a perfect activity to fill in the five minutes between behavioral samples during my observations. Throw in the challenge of photographing birds well enough to identify them and I was more than sold.

Next trip to town I stopped in at the bookstore and bought “Birds of Kenya & Northern Tanzania”, a Helm field guide. This is my first bird book, so I can’t offer much insight into its quality except to say that the pictures are beautiful and between those, the descriptive blurbs and the range maps, I’ve found the book very useful for identification. Immediately after buying the book I began looking up species as I saw them, marking them with highlighter and a note as to the month and location of the sighting. March was quite easy as I occupied myself with noting all the obvious species: common ostrich, kori bustard, pied crow, speckled pigeon, the aforementioned rollers, etc. In April I slowed down a bit as it got harder to find and ID new species. Going into May I had identified 60 species and set a goal to make 100 before leaving Kenya. Today I got my 100^th bird, Rüppel’s long-tailed starling (and then my 101^st and 102^nd as well). I am way more into this whole birding thing than I ever expected to be and have already ordered an Eastern North American bird guide that should be waiting for me when I arrive home on Monday. Let the life-long hobby begin!

Without further ado, here is my list (so far). More photos coming in a few days when I'm back in the land of unlimited internet.

1. African harrier-hawk

2. African pied wagtail

3. African snipe

4. African spoonbill

5. African white-backed vulture

6. Amur falcon

7. Barn swallow

8. Bataleur

9. Black-headed heron

10. Black-headed oriole

11. Black-lored babbler

12. Black-shouldered kite

13. Black-winged plover

14. Black-winged stilt

15. Blacksmith plover

16. Blue-naped mousebird

17. Bronze sunbird

18. Brown parrot

19. Brown-crowned tchagra

20. Cattle egret

21. Chestnut sparrow

22. Cinnamon-chested bee-eater

23. Collared pratincole

24. Common bulbul

25. Common drongo

26. Common ostrich

27. Crowned plover

28. D’Arnaud’s barbet

29. Egyptian goose

30. Eurasian bee-eater

31. Eurasian hobby

32. Eurasian roller

33. Fischer’s sparrow-lark

34. Grassland pipit

35. Greater blue-eared starling

36. Green-headed sunbird

37. Grey crowned crane

38. Grey heron

39. Grey woodpecker

40. Grey-backed camaroptera

41. Grey-capped social weaver

42. Grey-headed bush-shrike

43. Hadada ibis

44. Hamerkop

45. Helmeted guineafowl

46. Hildebrandt’s starling

47. Isabelline wheatear

48. Jackson’s francolin

49. Kittlitz’s plover

50. Kori bustard

51. Lesser grey shrike

52. Lesser kestrel

53. Lesser striped swallow

54. Lilac-breasted roller

55. Little rock thrush*

56. Long-tailed widowbird

57. Malachite kingfisher

58. Marabou stork

59. Marsh sandpiper

60. Martial eagle

61. Northern anteater chat

62. Pale flycatcher

63. Pied crow

64. Purple grenadier

65. Red-billed oxpecker

66. Red-capped lark

67. Red-cheeked cordon-blue

68. Red-fronted barbet

69. Red-fronted parrot*

70. Red-headed weaver

71. Red-rumped swallow*

72. Red-winged starling

73. Ring-necked dove

74. Rufous sparrow

75. Rufous-naped lark

76. Rüppel’s griffon vulture

77. Rüppel’s long-tailed starling

78. Sacred ibis

79. Secretary bird

80. Scarce swift*

81. Scarlet-tufted malachite sunbird*

82. Shelley’s francolin

83. Silvery-cheeked hornbill+

84. Somali courser

85. Speckled mousebird

86. Speckled pigeon

87. Superb starling

88. Taita fiscal

89. Tawny eagle

90. Three-banded plover

91. Tropical boubou

92. Violet-backed starling

93. Wattled starling

94. White stork

95. White-bellied bustard

96. White-bellied go-away bird

97. White-bellied tit

98. White-browed coucal

99. Yellow-billed duck

100. Yellow-billed oxpecker

101. Yellow-billed stork

102. Yellow-necked spurfowl

*seen in Aberdares National Park

+seen at Trout Tree

One for the Birds

I figure it is time to join Corinne and Jenny and put up some bird photos (or "birdie pickies" as Dan once amusingly referred to them).

This field season I have found the avifauna particularly eye-catching and intriguing. There are many, many varieties of birds here and I encounter a few in particular every day. Unfortunately, my knowledge of birds and my ability to identify them is pathetic, so I can't tell you many of the names, and most of the names that I will provide were told to me weeks ago and I didn't write them down so I may have gotten them wrong. Apologies to those who know better, and feel free to correct me.

First there are the weavers that live in a dense colony in the one fever tree here at the research center. They have woven dozens of gourd-shaped nests, many of which currently hang in the branches like Christmas ornaments, but most of which seem to be rejected and end up scattered on the ground below. They are yellow, and pretty, but I don't have a satisfactory photo yet.

There are many other birds that live around the research center. The most annoying are probably the doves that hang out on the banda roofs and call loudly, usually at 5:30, a half hour before I wake up. Other birds call in the morning as well, and it is by their calls that I can tell, when I wake up and it is still dark, if it is nearly time to get up or if I have a couple more hours of sleep.

My favorite research center bird is the roller (I think...possibly the lilac-breasted roller?). Such a gorgeous and cute bird! As my possibly made up name suggests, its chest is lilac and then the rest of it is a patchwork of deep blue, turquoise, burnt orange, gold, black and probably some other colors. There are one or two that show up periodically at the center and I feel lucky every time I see one. The photo below was taken out in the field.

Another of my long-time favorite birds is the crowned crane. It is elegant, as cranes tend to be, with a puff of gold feathers on its head. I remember first seeing one of these at the Louisville Zoo one summer during Zoo Camp. I was definitely a mammal girl even back then, but this bird caught my eye and when it came time to decorate t-shirts with puffy paint, I painted a crowned crane. Here is a crane I managed to capture in flight. It spotted a cheetah I was photographing and landed near it (but not too near) and proceeded to announce its presence to all of the would-be prey by calling loudly, hopping up and down, and flying quick circles above it. Very amusing to watch.

I have no idea what the next bird's name is, but it is a constant presence out in the field. I think they are ground-nesting birds. I first noticed them because they are always along the road when I am watching tommies, but it wasn't long before I noticed that the tommies were particularly vigilant to their alarm calls. These birds freak out whenever jackals (or humans, eagles, or other predators) are present and since tommies, especially fawns, are also vulnerable to jackals the tommies tend to pay attention when these birds speak up. Because I am interested in jackal-tommy interactions, I have also found myself looking around for the offending predator when I hear the birds' shrill cries.

Finally there are the ostriches. Enormous, gangly birds. I hadn't given ostriches much thought before this field season, but I am developing a mild dislike of them. They seem to be intent on disrupting my behavioral observations as they constantly walk between me and my subject animals and stop right in my line of sight. This happens with a suspiciously high frequency given the relatively low numbers of ostriches about. I think they do it on purpose. Besides their attempts to sabotage my research, they are just weird-looking. And not just because they have ridiculously long legs and necks. I think all of the features I find unappealing on them I would probably also find unappealing on any other bird, if those features were large enough for me to see them on other birds. Ostriches just take everything and make it way too big. In their favor I will say that their mating dances are amusing and it is eternally fascinating to me that you can actually see whatever they swallow travel all the way down their necks.

In non-bird news, research is going well, but is slowing down as of late because, well, the births are slowing down. The hartebeest have not really been productive since I got here, but the tommies were at first and now have died down. Both species are supposed to be year-round breeders and birthers with pronounced peaks near the rains. I think with last year's severe drought though, even these fairly drought tolerant species stopped cycling. According to Ol Pej's hartebeest monitoring data, hartebeest infants are about half as abundant as usual. I suspect I am seeing few non-peak tommy mothers because of the drought as well: if they stopped cycling and conceiving during the drought last year and then all started up again when the rains came, this year should be particularly synchronized for births, meaning that I am now running short on moms to watch. I am still out there every day watching moms with older infants and non-lactating females and am constantly on the lookout for new moms. I just don't see them. Nothing to do but to keep trying.